Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 15-17, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:17:00 GMT

Continuing its strong appeal to arthouse audiences, Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit has moved up to #1 atop this week's Indie Box-Office Roundup. The Israeli comedy, released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics, managed an impressive per-screen average of $11,267, up from $9,642 last week. At a time when the big Hollywood releases are opening big and falling fast, it's good to see a movie that really catches on with audiences like this. A movie like The Band's Visit may never pull in Cloverfield grosses, but in its limited release it should have more staying power than most would-be blockbusters.

Also maintaining a strong showing over President's Day Weekend was last week's chart-topper, Focus Features' In Bruges, now at #2 with a $10,420 per-screen average in its second week of release. Martin McDonough's film is still expanding its release, so expect the averages to dip somewhat in the following weeks.

The weekend's top premiere was George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the inaugural release from Weinstein Company offshoot Third Rail Releasing. Romero's film, his fifth Dead movie to date, garnered a solid $6,549 per screen, and will expand to 10 more markets for the weekend of February 29.

Rounding out the top 5 were Cao Hamburger's The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (City Lights) and the self-distributed David and Layla. Also of note was Magnolia's program of 2007 Oscar-nominated Short Films, which finished #9 on the list. However, I find their figures more than a bit dubious, considering I had to pay separate admissions for the Animated and Live-Action programs.

Finally, Juno-watch! The movie that Roger Ebert called "his true love" finished just outside the top 10 this week, raking in $2,993 per screen, finishing ahead of last week's top wide-ish release, There Will Be Blood. Next week could see a bump in a number of current limited releases, depending on how the Oscars pan out. So hopefully we'll get a nice surge for PT Anderson, not so much for Diablo Cody and Ivan Reitman's kid.

Top 10, Weekend of February 15-17:
1. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($11,267 per screen)
2. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($10,420 per screen)
3. George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead [Third Rail Releasing] ($6,549 per screen)
4. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($5,430 per screen)
5. David & Layla [David & Layla, LLC] ($5,007 per screen)
6. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days [IFC First Take] ($4,808 per screen)
7. How To Cook Your Life [Roadside Attractions] ($3,704 per screen)
8. The Business of Being Born [International Film Circuit] ($3,608 per screen)
9. 2007 Academy Award Nominated Short Films [Magnolia Pictures] ($3,605 per screen)
10. Caramel [Roadside Attractions] ($3,360 per screen)

Source: IndieWire.

Screengrab Q&A: Eran Kolirin, Director of The Band's Visit

Peter Smith — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Eran Kolirin's first feature, The Band's Visit, opened in New York and Los Angeles last Friday. A poignant story of an Egyptian police band lost in Israel, the film has won a host of awards worldwide. That the film has done well internationally is fitting, since for all its apparent evocation of local politics, its themes are existential — can we connect with other people, or even with our own pasts? The Band's Visit makes the political personal, capturing perfectly the homesickness that can strike even when you're still at home. And if I'm making it sound grim, it's also got some great jokes. When I reached Kolirin on the phone last week, he sounded weary and lonely, stranded in the middle of a two-week press tour — probably the perfect position from which to promote this wry, bittersweet film.

What was your initial inspiration for this film?
It began with an image of the main character, of Tewfiq, a man in uniform who sings an Arabic song. [Then] part of what you do is to research within yourself why this story interests you. It has my own private nostalgia for Egyptian cinema — part of my lost youth or childhood. I share this incomplete feeling that all of the characters share, a feeling of living beside life and not really touching. A movie is a kind of mirror of your own self.

The central relationship between Tewfiq, the reserved bandleader, and Dina, the woman who takes him in, feels very real. How did you develop it?
No big secret to this. Some of it was developed while working with the actors. Sometimes in a good cast you get this kind of magic, and at least as far as I'm concerned, between Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz, this is what happened. During the rehearsals we rewrote the scenes. For example, the whole scene of them on the park bench was written through rehearsal.

That relationship encapsulates the whole subtext of the film—the question of whether it's possible to connect with another person. Even though it's about people from different cultures and different languages, there's a universal quality to that struggle.
I never thought I had these characters who are very different and this movie kind of brings them together — not at all, not for a second. It's the very starting point, I never doubted it: they're all the same. And this is why sometimes when people describe the movie as different cultures coming together. . . I never thought about it this way.

As you show in some of the family scenes, it's perfectly possible to feel lonely and isolated even within your own family — never mind different cultures.
Yeah. I kind of have this thing with loneliness. [laughs]

What are some of your favorite films?
Mike Leigh's High Hopes. Down by Law by Jarmusch. I like very much Jean-Claude Brisseau, Sound and Fury. With this movie, I was thinking also of Jacques Tati and Aki Kaurismaki, and I guess there are a lot of others — I like Wenders a lot, I like Bresson and I like Ozu.

There's a very sharp sense of place in this movie. This outpost town, Bet Hatikva, feels very real. I have very strong childhood memories from those places. Since I have asthma, they sometimes would take me to small towns — not where we shot, but towns not far away from there — what they would call in Israel development towns. And I have memories of these concrete buildings — this kind of monumental communist architecture in the desert, and this feeling of distance and emptiness.

I tried to shoot it more like I remembered it than the way it is. It took me a lot of time to understand how to get this feeling. I realized that what makes a difference is the sound of those places. Sometimes in the desert the wind blows in your ears and you go deaf for a second. We tried to somehow capture this feeling in the whole sound of the movie.

If you just told somebody you were making a film about Arabs lost in Israel, they might expect an obvious political statement, which this film isn't.
I know those expectations. In some ways it's kind of a colonialist approach. You're expected to be in this theater play they wrote. And you know, I live in the Middle East, and I'm aware of the politics. This is a political movie as far as I'm concerned. There are questions of culture, there are questions of the connection of Israel to the region, and how it's lost its connection through the process of capitalization and modernization. There's a very specific connection between the Israeli side and the Egyptian side in the movie. They share this same feeling of loss, nostalgia. If you listen close enough and you're acquainted with the cultural conflicts of the region, you would see the movie raises a lot of political questions. Not just the obvious ones about the conflict — I'm not saying those questions are not important, but it doesn't have the character saying, you know, "My brother was killed in the war," and then everyone can sleep comfortably in their beds having been reassured about what it was all about.

How has the film been received in Israel and Egypt?
Unfortunately, it cannot be shown in Egypt, formally anyway, but I've been reading quite a lot of articles from the Arab world about the movie, and I've gotten some good reactions. It's been reviewed quite well in Israel, and again, the nuances, they differ from place to place, but at the end of the day, the proportion of people loving it and not loving it is about the same all over.

Israel couldn't submit this film for an Oscar, because over half of it is in English. Were you disappointed?
I would like to say thank God, because without the Academy Award I've been flying all over the States for two weeks now and I miss home. If I had been a nominee, they would take me here for two months. I would kill myself.

The Screengrab : eran kolirin

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 15-17, 2008

Screengrab Q&A: Eran Kolirin, Director of The Band's Visit